TEACHERS are using a boycott of national curriculum tests to challenge the policy of an elected government, the Court of Appeal was told yesterday. Wandsworth council is appealing against a High Court decision that a test boycott by the National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers is a legitimate trade dispute.

Patrick Elias QC, for Wandsworth, told the court: 'The union is challenging the policy of an elected government by the use of sanctions by seeking to resolve in the industrial sphere that which should be resolved in the constitutional sphere.'

The union's members have voted to boycott all national curriculum assessment and testing. This summer's tests for 14-year-olds will be worst affected.

Wandsworth contests the union view that the dispute is a protest over the workload imposed by testing and therefore lawful under the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992.

Mr Elias said he was not suggesting that the union's position was a sham and that workload had been put forward to drum up a dispute. Workload was a strand, but the dispute was wider than that: it concerned the content of the national curriculum and the nature of testing.

Jeffrey Burke QC, for the union, argued that this was 'an old-fashioned trade dispute' about workload which had come to a head as a result of the increasing demands of the national curriculum and testing.

'There is an everlastingly accumulating increase in assessments and tests at each stage, year by year, subject by subject,' he said.

Tourists are limp, leaderless and distinctly UnAustralian

Andrew Grice: Inside Westminster

Blairites be warned, this could be the moment Labour turns into Syriza

The mystery of Britain's worst naval disaster is finally solved - 271 years later

Exclusive: David Keys reveals the research that finally explains why HMS Victory went down with the loss of 1,100 lives

'I saw people so injured you couldn't tell if they were dead or alive'

Nagasaki survivors on why Japan must not abandon its post-war pacifism

The voter Obama tried hardest to keep onside

Outgoing The Daily Show host, Jon Stewart, became the voice of Democrats who felt the President had failed to deliver on his ‘Yes We Can’ slogan. Tim Walker charts the ups and downs of their 10-year relationship on screen